Cut scenes in video games

[mikeymikec]

I encountered in this meme on imgur, and I have to say I'm baffled. I've been playing video games more or less since video games were invented, and I'd say in-game cut scenes are almost as important an innovation (because plot progression, y'know) as the save-game feature. There are times that they can be irritating, such as non-skippable cut scenes just before the boss fight that you've failed to defeat umpteen times in a row, or the 'interactive cut scene' game mechanic in the modern Tomb Raider games, but in general for games that have some kind of conclusion I think it's essential to at least have them.

Thoughts?

 

[lxskllr]

I don't game much anymore, but I always liked cutscenes. It's entertainment that doesn't require much from me. And of course it helps explain the story.

 

[igor_kavinski]

You haven't seen crazy gamers then. There are gamers who just wanna chew through whatever is on screen. They don't care about the story or the plot. All they care about is killing anything that moves and doing it as quickly as possible. It's disturbing to see some of these players. They play like robots with a single minded obsession to just kill kill kill. For them, cutscenes are a nuisance.

Me, I like to enjoy the atmosphere of a good AAA game. I prefer to move around slowly and run only if I'm low on health and running is the only way to escape the baddies.

 

[zinfamous]

depends. If it's an MMO that's all about looting and grinding or whatever, I skip everything because none of that ever matters and the story is almost certainly trash, anyway.

other than that, I tend to watch. But if the cutscenes are tedious and annoying, I do get frustrated if the game doesn't allow skipping.

 

[sdifox]

I skip all cutscenes

 

[IronWing]

I cut all skip scenes. Shortens The Wizard of Oz by ten minutes.

 

[Dranoche]

Poorly implemented cutscenes are just as frustrating as bad game mechanics. Non-skippable cutscenes before difficult events or bosses, which checkpoint right before the cutscene, are frustrating and waste time. Poor cutscene transitions can break immersion or momentum. Interactive cutscenes are often unexpected and result in missed inputs or have unintuitive movement controls. Long cutscenes that can't be paused or have an unintuitive button assigned for pausing can make you stop caring and eventually skip everything.

That meme reminds me more about games that switch up the final boss at the last moment to a character or some other thing the game never invested any time in, making me wish I had skipped all the cutscenes.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I love cutscenes/story (it's why I play the game usually). What I fucking hate is games that are unpausable in single player (looking at you, dark souls/elden ring), and games that have unpausable cutscenes. What's that, literally anything in life happening requiring you to not be staring at a several minute cutscene? Time to go to youtube to figure out what the fuck is going on!

 

[BoomerD]

They play like robots with a single minded obsession to just kill kill kill.

You say that part like it's a bad thing. For me, the story rarely matters Beyond to explain who I'm supposed to kill...and why.

 

[nakedfrog]

I like having the option to jump through each bit of dialogue once I'm done reading it instead of waiting for the voice work to finish, much faster that way. But I don't skip them entirely.

 

[Captante]

No.... I play games as much, if not more for the story then I do mindless combat.

OTOH UN-skippable cutscenes really take away from the replay-value of a game no matter how good the story was.

A nice round of "battle-royale" (aka: deathmatch) or "capture the flag" type games can be a lot of fun but it also gets mind-numbing pretty quickly unless shallow crap like professional wrestling or transformers movies are your thing!

 

[Oyeve]

I love cutscenes/story (it's why I play the game usually). What I fucking hate is games that are unpausable in single player (looking at you, dark souls/elden ring), and games that have unpausable cutscenes. What's that, literally anything in life happening requiring you to not be staring at a several minute cutscene? Time to go to youtube to figure out what the fuck is going on!

Ah, but that's the beauty of from software games!

 

[igor_kavinski]

You say that part like it's a bad thing. For me, the story rarely matters Beyond to explain who I'm supposed to kill...and why.

Just different strokes for different folks, I guess. I'm the sort of person who stops to look and smell the roses. If I had a YT channel of me playing games, people would watch it before bed, to help them fall asleep

 

[JEDI]

You haven't seen crazy gamers then. There are gamers who just wanna chew through whatever is on screen. They don't care about the story or the plot. All they care about is killing anything that moves and doing it as quickly as possible. It's disturbing to see some of these players. They play like robots with a single minded obsession to just kill kill kill. For them, cutscenes are a nuisance.

Me, I like to enjoy the atmosphere of a good AAA game. I prefer to move around slowly and run only if I'm low on health and running is the only way to escape the baddies.

Speedrun

i saw a few of those on youtube.
geez a couple of hrs from start to finish. (ie: zelda, super mario)
cant imagine the time they spent practicing those games.

 

[dullard]

Viva La Dirt League does a ton of videos related to skipping. The most relevant to the OP is this one:

And of course, the opposite, what happens when you don't skip:

 

[SKORPI0]

I like how some players make the cutscenes into movies which I enjoy watching. Some perhaps having better storyline than the ones in live-action movies.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Have always hated cutscenes. If I wanted to watch a movie I'd watch a movie.
But, with decent voice acting and decent scripts, they are a LOT better than they used to be.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Speedrun

i saw a few of those on youtube.
geez a couple of hrs from start to finish. (ie: zelda, super mario)
cant imagine the time they spent practicing those games.

I have seen gamers start speedrunning a game from the very first time they play it. I'm like, "Dude. What's the rush???"

That's just how their hyper brains work.

 

[sandorski]

Long unskippable Death animations followed by long loading respawns are worse.

 

[linkgoron]

IMO cutscenes are great when done properly (e.g. Zelda, old C&C games) but sometimes games are just unplayable because of them (e.g. Bayonetta)

 

[igor_kavinski]

MGS4 cutscenes

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632696-metal-gear-solid-hd-collection/61041625

 

[VashHT]

MGS4 cutscenes

View attachment 74475

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/632696-metal-gear-solid-hd-collection/61041625

Why even subject yourself to a game if you not only hate the story but also parts of the gameplay? I enjoy cut scenes, always have even back when they sucked in old games. It'd be kind of funny if they brought back FMV ones like they used to have for Wing Commander and other games back then.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Honestly, while I enjoyed them during the first couple of times I played the games, the LOOONG unskippable cutscenes in the "Wolfenstein" series are beginning to tire me.

 

[purbeast0]

This hasn't really been an issue for me in like the past decade or so.

I watch cutscenes for the games I am playing and enjoy em, but I have noticed you can always skip them if you want to.

And then in recent games, like God of War and Elden Ring, if you have a cutscene before a boss, and then die, when you go to face the boss, the cutscene doesn't happen again.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Why even subject yourself to a game if you not only hate the story but also parts of the gameplay?

I enjoy almost every part of MGS4, no matter how bad but unskippable long cutscene is where I draw the line. Kojima deserves every expletive from me if he forces me to sit through something against my wishes.